2009: Year-End Retrospective. Personal - Advent

Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night



Frankly, dear readers, this was a tough year. Hella tough. Every year, around Christmas, I've written a personal retrospective on the year, and it's traditionally been among the writing I worked on the hardest, and was most proud of each year. This year, I'm going to give you a list of the things I learned, or realized and need to apply, because it was a really full year of stuff to be learned. Before I get into that, here's the big big, tippy-top high point of the year:

On Chuseok holiday, on a pretty little bridge in the loveliest neighborhood in Kyoto, Japan, Girlfriendoseyo and I got engaged. It was pretty sweet. I gave her a nifty ring and now we're working on setting dates and stuff. Anybody out there who can recommend a wedding planner who speaks both English and Korean?

But now, in list form, are the things I learned this year, in no particular order. Some of them have stories, but some of those stories pertain to people who read this blog, so this year's retrospective is going to be a little more circumspect than previous ones. Sometime this year I became circumspect. I'm still deciding how I feel about that.

1. Two things that comfort me are the sounds of ironing, and church. Church totally stomps ironing, though.

2. If I'm not working on improving myself, I'm in decline: human beings are too malleable to stay the same. If I'm not sure how I'm changing, in the absence of actual work on self-improvement, chances are I'm regressing in some area. That's something I learned in the absolute worst way this year. Nope. You won't be hearing the gritty details here. The first place to look to suss out the shape of that regression is where I spend my time. Without a goal, a guide, or a purpose for what I want to become, the combined stimuli of the ways I spend my time will decide for me. I learned this one when, for a while in the middle of the ATEK storm, which kept me crazy busy writing, moderating, and keeping in touch with various players, I assumed an important friendship would be around for me when I got back to it, and because of that neglect, it nearly wasn't.

3. Even when I think my friend is in the wrong, stand by that friend. The middle of a messy situation is not the time to let my friend know we're not on the same page; later, when it's just the two of us debriefing about the situation, is the time to have that conversation.

4. It doesn't take that much time a week working out, to feel a lot better.

5. It doesn't take that much money spent helping people, to feel a lot better. If you don't know yet about KIVA.ORG, then you need to find out, and help out. Seriously. Twenty-five bucks is nothing to most of us, but it can change a life.

6. Be generous with acquaintances but miserly with who I call friends, and who I trust. It helps to have a network of people and connections, but I discovered I need to be really sure about a person before calling them a friend, and be cognizant that usually adding a friend to the circle means having less time for the other friends already in the circle. I started learning this lesson back in 2008, and maybe it's a necessary step in becoming an online presence, but this is especially true of people I meet on the internet, and personalities that gravitate there. That's all I'm saying here.

7. It's worth my while to maintain ties with my family. Traveling back to Canada this summer was an eye-opener for me; it was so wonderful to see my family all together, that it caught me right off guard. Especially those of us who are a long time overseas, it's easy to go "out of sight, out of mind" but it's important not to. In fact, it was kind of shocking to go back and see everybody, like pulling off a bandaid and discovering that I'd missed these people way more than I admitted.

8. Remember my audience, not just in presentations, but in social situations. I hurt some of my friends with careless comments that, though funny, were disrespectful or hurtful to them. (Notice a theme? It's been a tough year friendsip-wise for me this year. I gotta learn to read people better.) This sensitivity is especially important when hanging out with people from a different culture, who might misread the wrong intentions my delivery.

9. Read books. After spending a long time mostly reading online articles and things, I finally started reading books again this fall. Books are great: they just get in deeper than blog posts and newspaper articles, and it's vital to look a little more rigorously at stuff from time to time.

10. I can't be friends through someone. The thing about friends of friends is that they're not my own friends yet, and it takes time and effort to turn those acquaintances into actual friendships. This is especially important in Korea, where people come and go, and the connection through which I knew someone might leave Korea before I have a chance to solidify that friendship, if I'm not on top of things. Gotta take ownership of that stuff.

Dear readers, I'm tired. This year has been exhausting for me, at different times, for different reasons, but sweet mercy, I want to lie in bed for two weeks... except that I'd probably feel worse at the end of that than I did at the beginning. I had a long talk with a friend, just this week, about seeking out quiet, and the way that without some time for introspection, and meditation, things can get hollow, and even worse, important things can be lost without noticing, if one doesn't stop to take stock.

But all that said... I got engaged this year! If I don't get at least twenty comments of congratulations on this post, I'm shutting down the blog forever.

(image source)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Here is a post I wrote last year for advent.

Back then, almost nobody read my blog; it's a long post, but I'm also more proud of this one than most of the other writing on this blog. Thought I'd draw attention to it, now that I have readers other than my grandma.

It was written for a friend's blog, for advent, and it's a bit more personal than the expat musings and pictures of my awesome weekend. . . but it is what it is, and during the holidays, it seems like a good time for reflection. It's about my search for meaning during one of the most difficult times of my life.

Part one:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-wrote-this-for-tamies-blog-but-ill.html

Part two:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/part-two-advent-of-meaning-at-least-for.html

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 1

Lately, the cause of consternation back home has been the condition of Roboseyo's faith. The last things I wrote here about faith were worrisome enough, (April Fools, when I claimed to have converted to Buddhism, and the provocative title, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins") but the eight month ABSENCE of writing on the subject seems to be even WORSE, and has been the topic of a handful of phone calls and e-mails.

Fair enough. I steered away from Faith topics here, at about the same time as I started commenting on some of the other Korea blogs, and putting my name out in that community -- I decided to try and get involved in those dialogues, and in doing so, adapted my blog for my new, hoped-for audience. I stayed away from the intensely personal subject of faith for the same reason I put on pants before I answer a knock at my door, and close the blinds when I change: impressive as it may be...don't everybody need to see that business, yah?

But last Christmas, for Advent, I contributed a guest post for my dear friend Tamie's blog, and honestly, it's one of the pieces of writing I'm most proud of. It being advent again, it seems like a good time to add another year's worth of reflection.

And this year, I have a story for you, titled, "How I Almost Decided to Hate God" about, um, just that.

As my long-time readers know, in September 2005, my mother lost her year-long battle with stomach cancer. The family was all at her bedside, and singing a church hymn, when she stopped breathing, and in a nutshell, that's the religious heritage I grew up in. After I returned to Korea, following my Mother's death, a certain, lovely young lady was a large part of my reason to return, as well as a big part of what helped me keep my bearings while watching the tumor in my mother's stomach crowd out the space where food should go. Whatever it was we had certainly had not been built to bear the weight of a giant black obelisk of grief, and fell apart, predictably, but startlingly quickly, at the same time as my best friend was preparing to marry her twin sister.

While my best friend's wedding was a little spark of joy, the few weeks leading up to it were pretty damn bleak, and I had a lot of fingers pointed in anger at God during that time. Quietly, she bore my accusations of her hating me, and even my claims that maybe she didn't exist after all, and certainly didn't give a rip about me (among other things, I have learned since then that God and religion and spirituality are not All About Me. More on that some other time.) As with my relationship with the lovely exgirlfriendoseyo, the faith I'd kept until then, too, didn't seem built to bear the weight of that giant black obelisk of grief, which turned out to pretty much be a wrecking ball.

And so that first year passed by. For a few months, I went to the dance clubs every weekend, not to meet girls or hang out, or have fun drinking, but to dance until I was a sweating, exhausted rag doll, to try and vent at least a bit of my grief and anger. My dad came and visited me, and we shared the kinds of silences that only we two could have shared, having been the two living in the house day by day, watching mom turn away more and more of the meals we set before her, blander in taste and smaller in portion as time went by, until she finally rejected food altogether.

The one-year anniversary of mom's death came and went, and a couple of coworkers took me out for beer so I didn't have to spend it alone in my apartment, staring at a wall and reliving the death-rattle (three years later, I can still conjure exactly the sound, and even the smell of that room. Sour milk and unwashed hair.) We didn't find out until shortly later that one of the two was totally batshit insane.

And one of my coworkers introduced me to a friend of hers: a former student whose family she had met and befriended. I'd heard her talking about them a few times, and asked if I could meet them before she left. Fortunately, she complied, and I was lucky enough to meet a really nice family that included two wonderful young ladies, aged ten and seven at the time. The ten year-old was just ridiculously smart: she showed me a story she wrote, and it was about what I'd expect from a very bright fourteen-year-old Canadian girl, not a ten-year-old Korean kid who'd never been out of the country.

Sally


Lisa

circa November 2006

The younger one quickly earned the nickname Giggles, because she was the funniest little thing you've ever met, and the two sisters loved each other fiercely: the younger one, Lisa, had taught herself to speak English nearly as well as her older sister, mostly out of sheer adulation as far as I can tell, and the older one took care of Lisa like a mother bear. Mom was a bit serious, pushing high expectations on her brilliant eldest, and Dad was a pretty quiet background presence all the way through, but Lisa was without a doubt, the joy in that household, and any time I spent time with that family, she made sure there were bubbles and sloshes of laughter spilling all over the place.

One day I got a phone call from the older sister. "Guess where Lisa went."
As usual, I started off silly. "Um, to Thailand? To Italy?"
"Rob. This is serious." And her voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Lisa went to heaven. She was in an accident and she went to heaven."




Yeah.




It feels impossibly narcissistic to talk about how I felt, in the face of a family losing their youngest sister and daughter. Even now, two years after, I can only type about three words at a time before taking a break to think about what it would be like to have something like that happen in my family, and pause, staggered all over again, and in the face of a tragedy like that, I have half a mind to end the post altogether...

but here's the thing.

That June, if you'd asked me point blank, I would have told you I wasn't a Christian (the label I'd had for myself all my life).  I'd have told you I didn't believe in God at all.  I'd have told you it hurt too much to believe in God, because then somebody must have LET all those life-changing, soul-scouring things happen to me, that it hurt less to believe it was total, random shit-happens chance, than to believe something out there had some kind of PLAN that REQUIRED me to go through what I did.

(by the way, I'm fully aware, and you don't have to remind me, that people have gone through much worse than I did: I've met some of them, and they broke my heart...but they can write their own stories on their own blogs)

But that's where I was at that time. It would have been easier to abandon the idea of meaning, than to have to hash through all the shit that happens to people, and try to keep looking for it, to insist that there IS a meaning, when faced with Erin, who lost her two brothers to malaria at age ten, and her parents to a plane crash at age twenty, and if you'd asked me what I thought about God, I would probably have had a few choice words for you. One of them starts with F.

But a funny thing happened when I got that phone call from Sally, and I still can't explain it. See, as soon as I finished talking to Sally (during which I was very intently focused on talking to this wonderful young lady who looked at me like some kind of big brother or kindly uncle, who'd lent me her Animorphs books), my mind went in two directions simultaneously. One part of me said "Well, fuck. That's it. In case I doubted before, God has very conveniently shown me she doesn't give a flying fuck about any of us here earthside, so fuck her too," and registered that this, if there ever had been, was a perfect moment to abandon God, purpose, pattern, and the search for meaning entirely. That door was hanging wide open, and I don't think anybody could have blamed me for stepping through it, and slamming it shut as hard as I goddamn pleased.

But you see...

at the same time, another part, somewhere in the deeper, vaguer parts of my mind, where thoughts come out as shapes and half-formed pictures and gestures instead of in neat words and phrases, this urgent need to pray for Sally and her family pulled me away from that gaping doorway, before I could make a single motion toward the door, before I could even ponder a post-God life, even though I had practically forgotten the language people use when they pray.

To this day, it remains one of the more mysterious moments in my life, and frankly, I'm still trying to make sense of it.

So where does Sufjan Stevens figure in?

Hang in there, and I'll tell you in part two.

My Brother Dan's Wedding Toast

I was the best man at my brother's wedding. Here was my toast for him and his wonderful wife, Caryn.

Dan And Caryn Ouwehand's Wedding Toast

Don't worry. It's shorter.


I remember one day going down the stairs to the room Dan and I used to share, and being greeted by a
funny kind of sound.
WHOOMPH!
Rustle rustle rustle.
WHOOMPH!
Rustle rustle rustle.

I was probably eleven years old then, and I opened the door to Dan, about eight years old, lying on the floor beside our bunk bed, wrapped in a sleeping bag, looking up at me with big, wide, excited eyes.

"Hey Rob! If you're wrapped in a sleeping bag, it doesn't even hurt to fall out of the bed!"

So I did what any wiser, older brother would do: I grabbed a sleeping bag and joined the fun.

We dumped ourselves off that top bunk or about twenty minutes until Dan's zipper got stuck on the bedframe and broke. When the zipper broke, we had to stop.

I tell this story because that was always Dan: he was the one jumping off and over things, riding his bike all around town and taking the dare where I'd shy away from it.

It's a bold step to get married. It takes courage to choose a person and entrust that one person with your future.

Dan and Caryn, though, have set up a solid foundation for their marriage. Their lines of communication are almost ridiculously open. I've spent some time with them, just relaxing and hanging out with them, and all of a sudden, Dan makes a joke, and Caryn doesn't laugh, and they start Communicating -- with a BIG big C.

"Oh. Sorry. You didn't like my joke?" Dan says.
"It wasn't funny," Caryn says.
"Not funny, like, inappropriate, or not funny, like,
not funny?"
"No, you know what? It's OK. It was funny. Really."
"But you didn't laugh. . . "

and so they go in circles as if it's a race to each be more accomodating than the other. It's silly to tease them about trying to hard to communicate excellently. In truth, it's like teasing a sprinter for having long legs.

I really respect Dan and Caryn's relationship, and the amount of commitment and effort they put into it. They work hard to have a healthy relationship: I was talking to Dan one night about Caryn, and how much I like her, and their way together, and he said it best when he told me "It's great because . . . we have a lot of fun together, but we can also solve problems." That's exactly it. They shore up each other's weaknesses, and encourage each other's strengths in amazing ways.

I've had the chance to see how they lift each other up and support each other in difficult times. As most of you know, Dan's and my mother can't be here today; a few months after Dan and Caryn got engaged, we learned that Jane Ouwehand has incurable stomach cancer. Most of the relatives on Dan's side that are here today, are planning to travel out to BC after the wedding, to visit Jane, because she's no longer strong enough to ravel here and see the wedding.

For our family this year, the joys and sorrows of life got mashed right up against each other. I know this is a bittersweet journey for many people here at the wedding, but I've also seen, because of these times, what a great support system Dan and Caryn have here in Red Deer, in their church, and especially with each other.

Dan and Caryn have built their love on trust and honesty and, moreover, on God. God has always been an important part of their relationship and their lives, so now, instead of diving off a bunk bed, Dan and Caryn are jumping together into a lifelong commitment, wrapped not in a sleeping bag, but in God's goodness and love -- and God's zipper never breaks.


Not many people get to speak for their mother and their brother with a speech, both in the space of a few months. I'm proud and honoured that I could do so, and I will never forget having the chance to do so.

Thanks.
Rob

Four Songs that meant a lot to me.

You may remember I went through a rough patch in late 2005/early 2006: losing your mom, and then breaking up with The Reason You Moved Across The Ocean can shake a person to the foundation, I've heard. Well, I'm happy to say I'm doing much better now. Here in Korea, they say Autumn is a melancholy time, the best time of the year for nostalgia and retrospection. I've been doing that, too, digging through my old diaries, poems, and e-mails to mull over the lowest low time I've had so far in my young life, to see what I picked up, like burrs from the brambles I walked through in the valley. So far, I like what I've found stuck to my clothes and hair: I walked out of that valley with some valuable stuff in my pockets.

Here are four songs that really, really helped me during that time. I sent them to some of my friends, listened to a few of them several times a day, during January, February, and March. And April.


This one is called Waiting For A Superman, by The Flaming Lips.

It's a really good song for when you feel sad, when you're ready to give up, when your ideals, principles, or heroes have let you down.

"It's a good time for Superman to lift the sun into the sky
is it getting heavy? Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be"

"Tell everybody waiting for Superman
that they should try to hold on best they can
he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything
it's just too heavy for Superman to lift."



This one is from The Mountain Goats. Their album The Sunset Tree is a fairly autobiographical, and INCREDIBLY raw confessional about the songwriter's experience coping with an abusive father, and getting away from that situation, whatever the cost. The stubborn insistence on hope, both in the music and in the words, made this the song equivalent of my motto for a while. I'd hum it when I walked to work.

"I am gonna make it through this year
if it kills me"

Rage, sadness, hope, determination, desperation, revenge, grief -- this guy's lived it, and somehow got it all into this album. I still thank the Mountain Goats for it. I didn't listen to this one as much as some of the other ones on this page, but Good Lord, I needed this one.




Next, these are the two songs I'd listen to (along with the last two movements of Beethoven's Ninth, which I wrote about in the post linked above (and here again).

Thunder Road - follow the link and see what I wrote about it there.



This song was the surest, fastest pick-me-up in my collection. The Arcade Fire made an album called "Funeral", because during its recording, two or three band members lost parents or siblings. It was on most year-end top ten lists in 2005, and this, the opening track on that album, is like a revelation. The first twenty seconds (the musical intro), and then the chorus, are a filling-up with life in the face of partings, endings, and deaths, that can get you through a day. The song builds -- it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like a rolling boulder gathering speed.

I like that part, but the chorus went through my head for an entire month (and it was a good thing, unlike MOST times a song sticks in your head for a month).

"You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to sing."

And this is the coda the song ends on, a call out for a purity of purpose, of living, that I needed at the time. The singer howls them out like a drowning man calling for help, desperate for life, desperate for purity, desperate to be full of. . . something.

"Purify the colours, purify my mind.
Purify the colours, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colours
in this heart of mine."

Listen to it.



I hope you like these songs. I sure needed them . . . maybe they'll do some good for you, too. Music is intensely personal, so if they don't move you, that's OK, but they sure plucked the right strings in my, at just the right time.

Not the FULL meaning of life, but a good chunk of it, I think.

Finally: yes, it's true. Fall is gasping into winter here in Korea. Last night I chatted with friends, eating sushi, and looked out the window as the wind showered leaves down from the trees onto the street.

Huge floppy leaves streamed into a dark little side street. No picture, but it was sure beautiful. Fall is waning, and the multicoloured leaves are falling fast, to make room for winter's starkness.

(PS: A bald tree in front of a streetlight is a really beautiful thing -- the way the thinnest twigs catch the light in a halo makes me think of spiderwebs.)

Next morning, street looked like this:


Unfortunately, some of those leaf piles concealed restaurants' compost bags, so it was a bit risky to stomp through them, and this pile (and many others) were big enough to conceal a sleeping hobo (who prefer to be left alone, rather than kicked by big kids like me), so I was a little cautious dragging my feet through them and letting the leafy crunchy sound fill my head up with happy-sauce and happy-sense.

I love the vein pattern of these kinds of leaves.


Today is Sunday. I walked with Matt for a good two hours this afternoon, on a riverside, a hill, and a university campus, talking (which was nice) but basically just being out in the middle of fall, letting the wind blow around us, and being alive. Fall in Korea is heaven, I swear. Even in the city, and even more in the country.

Trees are so beautiful. In the words of Annie Dillard: "You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn't it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo?" Sure glad God decided to go for the glamour and make something really, really, ridiculously good-looking instead. My friend Anna once used the word gratuitous, as in "We have a gratuitous god" and I'd have to say the beauty set into the world around us is absolutely gratuitous -- totally unnecessary! Beauty for beauty's sake alone! Almost shocking to my sensibilities, if I actually think about it, and definitely an apalling degree of overkill -- one tree ought to be enough beauty for any city in its entirety, yet instead, we're just overwhelmed by them, so much that we don't even think twice about cutting down these miracles of beauty and function!

Trees and colours against the sky: here's late fall in Seoul (today was the first properly cold day in Seoul -- gloves instead of pockets, heavy coats instead of layers).


Yet somehow the bamboo trees kept ALL their green.


Next: a path. With colours. I wish you could have been there. The green and red on the path is recycled car tires or something -- it makes the surface very pleasant and springy for walking or jogging.


Certain trees' leaves curl up like a hand when the cold gets to them. It's a bit hard to see this one, but imagine an entire tree where instead of falling, the leaves have curled up into fists -- not unlike some people who curl themselves up in the cold (instead of just going inside). Almost like Christmas tree ornaments.


This was a little tree grove in Kyunghee university: every leaf colour imaginable was somewhere in the grove, layered above and below the other colours. The leaves hadn't been swept up or rained upon, so they gave a really nice crunch underfoot. Matt and I lay down on our backs and stared up at the layers of leaf-colours and bare branches.


Like this. There were a few hundred birds in the grove, pipping and singing away, and the people walking by gave the ground a rustle. The sun was just low enough in the sky to come in from the side, and it was as if the sunlight plugged the colours in, threw a switch and set them blazing.



This (below) was the view from on our backs, looking up at the leaves. The sun and the leaves and the breeze and the birds joined together in an act either of love or of worship (or maybe both, if that's not too blasphemous or superlative for you). It was cold enough to see our breath, and every direction had a different mix of colours. The picture is two dimensional so it's hard to see how the leaves were layered one above the other, but I tell you, the rocks and trees were singing today.


After five or ten minutes (or maybe it was thirty seconds, or maybe it was five days -- it doesn't matter) Matt stood up and said to me, "Congratulations. You have taken part in a perfect moment in time." And he couldn't have been more right if a voice from the sky had spoken along with him, and then a mysterious hand had materialized and given him a high-five.

I can't find the exact quote, but I came across a spot where Steven Hawking said something to the effect that, of all the possible universes that could have existed, isn't it interesting that the one we live in, the one that DID come about, was one that contained creatures who could contemplate it, and wonder at it. Whether this leads us to proof of some creator or not, the fact remains, the universe constantly screams out "HERE I AM! BE AMAZED!", and we, humans, are lucky enough to have the capacity to do exactly that, and from there, even to search for a meaning to it all. Thank God! Framed in religious terms, the entire world was worshipping God today, and calling all the people in Seoul to worship with it. It was absolutely transcendental, and yet also absolutely embodied, rooted in the Here and Now of creation, and I don't know if there needs to be any more meaning to an autumn day than "Autumn is beautiful" and "Here I am! Be amazed!".

Here it is. Be amazed.



The earth is visible in this picture of Saturn.







And look at this one again, too. Just soak it in. It's as beautiful as a liturgy. . . I don't know if the picture is, but the moment sure was.

A chapel is a beautiful place to worship, sometimes (I'm thinking of those cathedrals that create a space of holiness by their mere design). . . but when God builds a place of worship, it's never exactly the same for two days in a row, and that says something.


Sometimes I think that's enough meaning for life -- just that it's so darn full of beauty. Some stories have no real meaning except "here's a great story" and some autumn days are the same, and seeing that, and accepting and enjoying it for exactly what it is: breathtaking beauty -- is an act of worship to whichever deity one chooses to credit. I'm glad I'm alive! Thanks, God, for giving me senses!



Other stuff:

The trivial:

how many song references can you spot/recognize in this chart?

It's Autumn in Korea. . . hang in there and I'll tell you about it. If you remember Josh Barkey from university, here's his blog, and a post that I really enjoyed -- a cool perspective on sin, if you will.

Some pictures, just to increase the tease.

In a city as crowded as Seoul, sometimes parking solutions get creative.


From a hostess bar: white fetish, schoolgirl fetish, the name of the bar (if you can't see it) is "better than beer". Matt and I decided there were probably no white girls OR school uniforms on the premises. . . and it wouldn't take much for it to be better than beer anyway, given the quality of Korea's local brews. Won't find me in there checking, though.


A little konglish

Combing through. . .

I've decided, in a similar spirit to people choosing to read their old diaries, and see what insights/points/issues defined them at some past time, and maybe even re-collecting something that nearly got lost in the shuffle (what if I had some great insight that I set aside because I was too busy with X, Y, Z, or Giraffe, and never got back to it, to think more on the topic? What if I never properly incorporated some event into What I Learned This Year?)

So, I'm digging through my old e-mails, especially the ones between me and my dear friends Ma, Me, Ta, and EJ, who corresponded me during the time Mom was sick, and also the year after that, as I grieved Mom and Exgirfriendoseyo. It's been interesting, but it's going to take a lot of boiling down. I want to create something -- some kid of testament to loss and grief and connection and sorrow and vulnerability and disillusion -- but I won't know what kind of shape that might take until I've been through it all. There are literally hundreds of pages to go through, trimming the fat and digging through the peripherals to the heart of things, but I think what I'll have at the end of it will be quite valuable.

You may get some scraps here on the blog of some of that stuff, but some of it might need to go in some other place.

Do YOU ever read your old diaries?

Knock-Down, Drag-Out (May 22nd 2004)

It's been a miserable, white-knuckled fight with a
cold for me these last two months (that's the
knock-down, drag-out in the subject line). So bad
that I've even taken Buckley's Mixture to poison the
cold out of my body. I'm in the midst of another one
now, one that features sinus congestion, a rasping
cough, and a ridiculous rate of tissue consumption
(tissue meaning kleenex, not any other kind of tissue
. . . I'm not THAT sick yet). (How odd that I can now
list cold features the way my students can list
features on their mp3 players.)

Last night I tried to write an e-mail to everyone, but
the computer managed to swallow the thing due to an
internet explorer/search engine glitch. This annoyed
me a lot -- I wonder what happens to all those e-mails
eaten by computers. Does some computer somewhere
store them? And why do computers only eat the
subtlest, wittiest, most brilliant, long (especially
long) e-mails? What do they want with the tastiest
bits of correspondence that makes them steal all the
best ones? I don't know, but last night in my
frustration, I sat there pondering what a
understanding computer could gain about humanity just
from the gleanings of the e-mails it eats.

On Friday morning we went to a zoo with our
kindergarten and preschool kids. This reminded me of
what a zoo should not be. (So far, most Korean zoos
I've seen have depressed me -- my jury's out on the
idea of zoos in general [Yann Martel had some
interesting insights about zoos in "Life of Pi" that
are worth turning over in one's head], but I fairly
roundly dislike Korean zoos -- too small,
uncomfortable, unnatural, crowded, and altogether
depressing.) The elephant was in a space that I could
have walked around in about four minutes, and she was
backed into a corner (where the only shade could be
had). It was obvious all she wanted to do was shrink
or be invisible. Meanwhile kids were lining up along
the fence and shouting -- screaming for it to come
out. Sad. Remind me to avoid Korean zoos if I get
another chance to see one. At least when Koreans live
in houses so small that they shove their mattress in a
closet in order to unfold the breakfast table, it's
their choice, and they could leave if the city or
emigrate if they've had it with living on the 16th
floor of a filing cabinet. The elephant didn't have
much choice about whether she wanted to be a country
elephant or a city elephant.

I'm doing mostly well. My students remain brilliant,
though I can't think, offhand, of some moment of utter
cuteness that I simply MUST share with you (sorry
about that). My brother got a good episode in an
e-mail a while ago, but I can't retell it without
losing the freshness. Recently I smirked when my
loudest student, upon my second loudest student
blurting out an incorrect answer, admonished him to
"think before you speak". Only through great
restraint did I avoid teaching them the word irony.
Nothing recently has quite reached the heights of the
boy who accidentally quoted Monty Python's Search for
the Holy Grail when he tried to sound out the bumper
sticker "I [heart] NY".

Things have been changing in my life. Recently, near
the beginning of lent, I realized that my love for
music was interfering with my progress on some of the
other passions and goals in my life. Some of you
don't know yet that I put myself on an indefinite
(until it's finished) music hiatus, as I sort out what
parts of my life I want as my top priorities. Since
then, I've been really encouraged with the way my
relationships have taken shape, and I've managed to
even meet some English speaking Christians who live in
my area. (This was something I never had last year,
but something I'm really enjoying -- I went to a bible
study on Thursday night without riding a subway for 40
minutes to get there!)

I'm also reading more, and reading the important stuff
more, and growing in my faith. So to those of you
who've been praying for me, thanks, and be assured
that there have been some encouraging results so far.
(We'll just wait to see what the next step will be.)

Other than hanging out with friends, reading, spending
time alone in thought (my journals and diaries are
filling up at about twice their usual rate), and
spending ridiculous amounts of time at school to get
all my marking done, and being amazed at how much
Korean pop one overhears in an average day, and how
much that singer/song sounds EXACTLY like Madonna's
single from last fall (except the vocals aren't as
strong . . . shudder), I'm wishing it were easy to
find NHL Playoff hockey on TV here (by the way,
congratulations, all my Albertan, and Canadian hockey
fan friends), and wishing I knew a place to find
certain favourite Korean dishes near my house.

And something else.

A pair of mondays ago (not long ago, really -- it
feels like longer) I got a call at 6:45 AM from Mom
and Dad. When the phone rings before 7 am, it's
usually not because somebody in their home church got
engaged.

They'd spoken to my sister and brother-in-law
(currently living in Germany). My nephew has always
been small, slow and a little uncoordinated for his
age: instead of playing fighting games like most 4
year olds, he would sit on the floor and play with a
train set; he preferred putting things together over
running places and climbing things. He was slow to
walk, and never really crawled. We suspected this was
because he was born 6 weeks premature.


********** if you're one of the relatives/friends who
has already heard this, and don't feel like getting
depressed by reading it again, you can skip reading
until the next bunch of asterisks.

******************************************

He'd been to a doctor, and they discovered an enzyme
in his blood that's usually found in patients whose
muscles are breaking down. The diagnosis:

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

This means his muscles will continually weaken until
his heart or lung muscles fail, somewhere in his late
teens or early 20s, barring an act of God. Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy usually appears in young boys, and
there's no cure other than minimizing discomfort and
using various tricks to maximize mobility.

This is surprising and disappointing. It's difficult
to know how to grieve a situation that's going to be
difficult for the whole family, but currently isn't
too bad. It's hard to consider that for the next
twelve or fifteen years, this emotional process will
sort itself out, but it will take that long to unwind
itself. It hasn't, and maybe it won't, sink in, just
what the next twelve years will involve in that
aspect. I don't know how I'm going to have to support
my family, or when I'm going to need support. It's
just really . . . detatched so far.



******************************************

What I DO know now, is that my nephew is a really
loving kid, and he's surrounded with love from his
family and community, and that will lead him through a
life with more blessings than a lot of people with a
lot more longevity experience.

I don't know exactly how these things work in God's
plan, except to reflect in sadness that we live in a
hurting world, and that all things are not right on
this planet. (I'll say, though, it's difficult to
consider one's own nephew as a symbol of the whole
world's malaise. It isn't that impersonal. It's
impossible to be that impersonal with someone you
love. That's always the risk of loving someone --
that something will hit you right in the soft spot you
have for that person.) Right now my prayer is that
our family will have peace, and that however God does
these things, and whatever happens, that we trust Him,
and that His name will be glorified.

So those are a few of the things buzzing through my
head these days. I'm doing OK -- I think this whole
family thing is really hard on my Mom and Dad, who
feel really far away (it's all happenning in Germany,
where Rebecca and Frank are surrounded by support from
their church community.) So keep my parents in mind
too, if you're the praying kind.

Today I went to an amusement park with my co-workers,
and talked a few people into going on rides they
actually shouldn't have taken (not for health reasons
-- just for wooziness purposes). I forget that other
people have a very different feeling about rides than
I do. Roller coasters are like tickling: it's all in
your head, and its YOUR tension that makes the ride
scary, and the tickling tickle. If you can relax
through either, it won't bother you anymore, and (for
the rides) you can enjoy them, or (for the tickling),
you can say "stop it, that's annoying" with a really
dry, drop-dead voice. Speaking of which, I've learned
how to be a wet blanket for my students when they're
being too funny and not paying attention. It's weird
having to deflate jokes, when I spent so much time
learning how to make and enjoy them.

Today I was at a major intersection, and the green
"walk" sign had started flashing, so I had to run to
catch the light. I jogged along, when I nearly
stopped in my tracks, in the middle of the road, at
the sight of an old, toothless man who was running
hilariously (chest out, fists pumping up by his chest,
legs taking small, old-man steps very quickly, head
leaning backwards as if he were being pulled by a rope
stuck to the front of his shirt) across the
intersection in the other direction, even later than
myself. He had this delightful smile as silly and
excited as the grins of little boys running away from
the girl's bathroom at school, where they just soaked
all the toilet paper in the sink.

Six minutes later, I looked over my shoulder at a
group of five friends lined up to pose for a picture.
The photographer was counting down to take the picture
when the light turned and the "walk" sign came on, and
the five friends turned around and started crossing,
in unison, totally stranding the photographer with
nothing in her view lens. The image of the five girls
turning around without hesitation, and the lone girl
up the creek without a paddle, cracked me up for a
good five minutes more.

So life goes on. Again, I must weather a family . . .
I hesitate to use the word crisis, because it's a
crisis in slow motion . . . whilst eight time zones
away (for now) from anyone else in the family (as I
did when my father had a bout with cancer last year --
now that feels almost like family situation training
to prepare for this one). I wrote in an e-mail to my
brother last year, at Dad's cancer diagnosis, that
these kinds of things are exactly the stuff of growing
up. Maturing is borne of a million things happening,
some big, some small, some controllable, some
uncontrollable, some forgotten the next day, some
indelible. We define ourselves by how we react to
these million things that happen, and by finding peace
(or not finding peace) with the things we can and
can't change. Sometimes we're thrown into a
situation, and other times, we throw ourselves into
one. However those million things happen, hopefully
we're paying enough attention to notice them, and we
never stop listening, and never stop learning.

Bless you all.
Rob

Mountain, Sauna, Matt, Church, Funny Students

OK. Fully aware that the last e-mail was a downer (so
much so that I've received about a third of the normal
number of responses to my updates, and most of those
much later, and from different people, than usually
respond to them, I'll try to balance it with a little
bit of wonder and joy.

And, storyteller that I am, I'll do it episodically.

On the night of the last full moon, one of my
coworkers invited me to climb Buram mountain (the
mountain five minutes from my house,) after work.
Just in time for the mosquitoes to get moving, we
headed for the forested mountain, and climbed, using
trails and occasionally pulling ropes, to make our way
upwards for about half an hour as the sun went down.

The moon was orange, and the patterns of streets and
apartment buildings in the valley between the
mountains was stunning -- there was just so much city.
For the southern Ontarians, imagine stopping at a
lookout point driving down Mount Hope on Hamilton, but
instead of looking down on Hamilton, looking down on a
city five times the size of Toronto (and visibility
was good enough that we could see a good quarter of
it). Lights all the way to the horizon. The photos
turned out beautifully, and they're on Jon's digital
camera.

We have two new co-workers: Matthew, who's really
energetic, positive, and fun, as well as being a
writer himself. He's a good, smart guy, and so far
we've really enjoyed each other's company. I've kind
of taken it upon myself to try and show him and the
other, brand-new teacher (Amanda, who looks a little
like Uma Thurman, and whose boyfriend is arriving in
two more weeks), around this area. Matthew already
knows a lot about Korea and Seoul, but Amanda's brand
new, and from a small town, so this afternoon I'm
going to give her a taste of the subway system.
Matthew is also a huge fan of the saunas here --
Korean bath houses are incredible, and they're one of
the best de-stressing experiences I've found -- and it
looks like I've found my first sauna partner since old
roommate Dave left. This makes me very happy. He's
also an avid traveller, which means I might have some
company to actually accomplish some travelling around
Asia this year: travelling alone just doesn't appeal
to me (said the guy who headed out for Korea
unaccompanied). I'm thrilled to have him around.

One of my Kindergarten classes, when I take
attendance, started playing the "say no when Rob asks
if I'm here" game, so I answered them with "well then
where ARE you?" They've been regularly insisting that
either A: one of their classmates has eaten them (to
which I shake my finger at the accused classmate and
say, in a funny angry voice, "No more eating Kevin,
Owen", or B: they're at my house in Canada. I tell
them to say hello and give a hug to my Mom and Dad.
One day, I asked them, "Well it's supper time in
Canada right now. What are you having for supper with
my mother and father?" So Mom, head for the grocery
store, because you'll need to have ingredients ready
for pancakes, cake, cookies, pizza, donuts, rice and
soup next time I take attendance and my kids all turn
up in your house.

There is a coffee shop in one of the busier districts
on Seoul called "Canada Coffee Shop"; it's funny,
because in Korea, there's a coffee shop with Canada's
name and flag, employing Koreans, selling Italian
drinks that were popularized by an American coffee
shop franchise (Starbucks). Then it occurred to me
that really, nothing's MORE Canadian than such a
combination -- Canada, the country where you'll find
an Italian restaurant owned by Chinese Canadians in
the Punjab district of Vancouver, where ability in
Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, English, Korean, and
Italian are all useful to better serve the clientele,
and where when I ask a new friend what her ethnic
background she says "Heinz 57: a secret combination of
herbs and spices." My Korean kids have trouble with
understanding the short history of Canada and the way
people here are from so many places -- you can be
Irish Hungarian Iranian Haida French and Taiwanese --
over here, I had one student whose family genealogy
stretched back twenty-eight generations -- and that
we're PROUD that such mixing can occur in our
increasingly (though not yet perfectly) diverse and
accepting society.

More in the lines of heritage and history:

I finally read the book my maternal grandfather wrote
about his family history, chronicling his family's
beginnings in Holland, the trial of the Second World
War, their immigration to Canada and the family's new
life there. When I was about sixteen, he sent me this
book he'd written after talking to all his father's
friends and relatives. At the time it was a bunch of
Dutch places and names without faces, and I got about
one chapter in before giving up. This time, after
conversations with my grandfather about our family and
heritage last January, and after being far enough away
from my roots to understand and treasure how deep they
are, reading it was a moving experience. The book
read, to me, as a tribute to my great grandfather, and
I imagined my Opa using research for his book as a
chance to get to know his own father in a new way, now
that he's gone, and realized that by writing down his
own discoveries as he tried to get to know his father,
he also gave me the chance to get to know HIM in the
same way. So thank you for that, Opa. Thanks for
writing down your journey, so that I could share it
with you, and get to know my own roots because you
recorded yours.

More recently, I was struck near the bone again by an
experience I had in my local, in-my-area church. It's
a small church, and it meets in a large classroom in a
Christian English school. The leader of the church is
a guy named Steve, and he has some contacts with the
underground church in China, and some missionaries
there. In China, church meetings are illegal, and
missionaries there have to be extremely careful,
becuase they're carefully watched. Instead of the
loud, exuberant, free singing found in a North
American or Korean church, a Chinese or North Korean
underground church can't risk being overheard, so they
will have one guitar playing lightly (if that), and
one person singing aloud (in a quiet voice) while all
the other worshippers mouth the words or hum quietly
along. The song leader in our church asked us to sing
a song in the style of the underground church. The
style of singing the song, whose words went, "He is
our peace, He has broken down every wall. . . Cast all
your cares on him, for he cares for you, He is our
peace. . . " was both a praise song, and a prayer for
those who can't worship freely -- who still live
behind walls. For about three days I couldn't get
that picture out of my head. I've been reminded.

I think prospects here in Korea are looking up: this
new potential travel/hangout friend in Matthew is a
really encouraging sign: I've been lonely and homesick
for the last month or so. Both the new co-workers are
pretty good friendship prospects, and if Amanda's
boyfriend (coming in July) is as cool as she is, we'll
be in for some good times. I'm reading good stuff --
Dune by Frank Herbert, and the Iliad by Homer have
both carried me away recently -- and writing has been
progressing (slowly . . . but progressing) as well.
As always, my students are brilliant and wonderful
even when nothing else is -- Cindy (the most verbose
student I have -- funny, but really chatty, and who
regularly, ironically, scolds Willy for talking too
much) was asking me about the homework I gave her: "Do
we really have to do this part?"

"Everything from page 56-59"

"What about on page 57?"

"Cindy, what part of "Everything" don't you
understand?"

"Everything."

I howled -- I don't think she realized on how many
levels her comment worked, but it was perfect. She's
the one who used "It's a travesty" instead of "It's a
tragedy".

In another class (another favourite class), we were
reading about Benjamin Banneker, a black intellectual
who challenged Thomas Jefferson in a letter about
their allowing of black slaves in America. During a
review class, I asked my students, "What famous
document did Thomas Jefferson help write?"

(the constitution)

"I don't know."

"It starts with a C."

"I don't know."

"The conn n n nn "

"glish."

Konglish is the Korean slang word for English words
that sneak into the Korean language -- words like
guitar, barbeque, piano, hamburger, and words that
didn't quite make the jump intact, like "handphone"
and "air con" for "air conditioner".

Showing Amanda (who's never been overseas before)
around the area, and around Seoul, has been a good
reason to revisit a lot of places I hadn't been to in
a long time. New people in one's life often causes
one to revisit old, familiar places, both in
conversation and in location. That's one of the best
things about having visitors to BC: an excuse to see
canyons and mountains and theatres that one doesn't
otherwise visit.

Today I went to one of Korea's traditional markets --
it's mostly touristy now, but still loaded with old
Korean goods like jewelry boxes, carry bags, and other
wonderful artifacts of Koreanity. I'd forgotten how
quaint and lovely the area is with its cobblestone
road and bamboo building exteriors and a funny blend
of modern destination and ancient Korean market.


In follow-up to what I said last time about my nephew,
I'll just share a verse in the Bible I found that
reflects my view about the whole thing.

John 9:1-3:

1As he [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from
birth. 2His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
3"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said
Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God
might be displayed in his life.

-- My prayer now is that "the work of God might be
displayed in [Matthias'] life". In the case of the
man born blind, that meant Christ would (shortly
thereafter) heal him; in my nephew's life, that might
be the work of God in his life; it might be something
that I can't see or imagine now, but that will totally
surprise and amaze everyone when it happens. I'm
finding peace about the situation; I mostly just want
to see him again.

I was walking through a shopping center in Seoul and
accidentally stumbled upon some kind of program -- a
group of 11-15 year old boys were playing in a drum
arrangement with large and small drums and cymbals.
For a long time, they played, varying the beat and
somehow managing to continually increase the intensity
of their rhythms. Heads bobbed in unison; it seemed
like even the sweat crawling down their faces ought to
be synchronized, and I realized that each of these
boys had, for a little while, ceased existing: they
were only the rhythm, nothing except the same as their
teammates, and I, too, disappeared for a while (I
can't tell exactly how long: clocks seem to stop
working properly when you're carried away like that).
What an invigorating experience! Somehow getting away
from myself for a little while makes me feel so much
more comfortable once I'm back in my own skin, but not
many things can do that. Old friends can, and chances
to really show a person love or compassion can.
Sometimes worship can (that's where the word ecstasy
originally comes from -- the heightened state of
excitement old Greeks observed during certain
religious rituals), or art -- creating or engaging
with it. Regardless of where it occurs (I imagine
intense exercise or competition would do the same),
it's quite an experience, and certainly makes
returning to onesself a lot easier, sort of the way
travelling can make your hometown feel that much more
comfortable. I once read a note a Japanese ESL
student had written to a penpal, and she had signed
off with the phrase "Have a vivid day" -- I loved
that: not just a nice day, or a happy day, but a vivid
day. May your experiences today be intense and
interesting, and may your mind be aware enough to
notice things as they happen to you, and may you
relish them. Sometimes I'm walking down the street
and suddenly, inexplicably, it's as if somebody
flipped a "senses on" switch in me somewhere, and I
can see every leaf on every tree, taste the sunlight,
and feel the air sliding between my fingers. I wish I
knew how to bring such an experience on whenever I
wanted, but until then,

Have a vivid day.

All my love.

Rob

A More Personal Update (March 23rd 2004)

This one got more and more personal as I went on, so
pardon the initial cuteness; I decided halfway through
that it was only going out to a very short list of
people. it's a little long, but i've never been one
to apologize for that. please bear with me. this
letter is not for bulletin boards or public
discussion. it's more so you can know how your
prayers for me have been answered.


OK, so here are some advantages and disadvantages to
living alone:

advantage: you can do whatever you please at home
disadvantage: this usually means nothing interesting

a: you can go to bed whenever
d: korean meals are often designed to be eaten by two

a: you can walk around wearing anything you want
d: there's noone to be shocked or surprised or
disgusted or any such thing

a: you pick what movies to rent
b: you can never think of anything you want to see

a: you don't have those pointless small talk
conversations about whether its better to push a chair
in with your foot or your hands
d: those conversations are fun

a: nobody knows, or checks, where or how you are
d: nobody knows, or checks, where or how you are

a: privacy
d: nobody has a backup copy of your keys (funny typo
there: I originally typed "eyes" instead of "keys")

a: long showers
d: it takes initiative to hang out with someone
a: which means you get personal stuff done
d: or waste untold amounts of time on pointless fluff

a: you can keep it as clean as you like
d: you can keep it as dirty as you like

a: no one else can take credit for the decor.
d: no one else can take blame for the smell.


and so forth.

I've been sick for quite a while now -- it seems that
just as I was recovering from that last cold, I caught
another one, or something like it. All my co-workers
are sick. There's this stuff called the yellow dust
in the air right now -- it's dust blown in from (I
think) the Gobi desert in China, and it's a fine dust
that makes the air hazy for a few weeks every spring,
and people with asthma are told to stay indoors (or
wear these cute surgical masks that you can buy at any
convenience store -- remember pictures from Shanghai
during the SARS scare? Exactly like that -- just not
as many). It also makes sore throats and head colds
increase, and makes sore throats (like mine) heal
really slowly. Kids miss classes, the local news
gives air quality indexes, and if it's too high,
school is cancelled (but not private academies like
ours).

I'm having a lot of fun with my classes right now. I
have one trick where i tell students to touch my nose
(then I wonder why I'm sick), and make some animal
noise; then I say "Do it again" and repeat. Then,
after three or four repetitions, instead of meowing,
or clucking, I shout "BOO!" and startle the dear
child. I had one student who's the most vocal student
in my class -- good attitude, sense of humor, but
loud; I had just shown the rest of the class my trick,
when she walked in late. She says "Why is everybody
laughing?" and I said, "Come here and I'll show you."
And I did. Great times -- I really enjoy that class.

In another class one of the students was reading
something about bumper stickers, and the "I Love New
York" sign was in the article -- the I heart NY one.
While he was reading he came across this sign and
instead of saying "I love New York", he sounded it out
and said what sounded like "I hurt knee."

That was the class where, because I was tired at the
end of the day, I offered them bananas and kept
calling them "umbrellas" -- and you know how once you
get the wrong word in your head, you're GOING to make
the mistake again. So now we have a running joke
where if I can't think of the word for something, I
call it "umbrella". And there's this girl named
Christine in that class who just goes into hysterics
whenever I do something funny. They're also quite
smart. Then somebody misread "soap on a rope" as
"soup on a rope" and what could I do but crack up?

There's also a student in that class who's so
obssessed with Lord of the Rings that his name is
Aragorn. Every writing assignment I give must have
qualifiers like "design an invention to make your life
easier. that's YOUR life; not the life of an Orc
warrior or a white wizard." It's actually quite funny
though. He's a really bright kid, and he said he
wants to be a writer. He's talented enough (at age
14) to give it a go.

Last weekend I went to Everland (an amusement park)
with a new friend named Colleen. Colleen is cool.
She's good to talk to, a bit older than myself, an old
hand at living in Korea, tolerant of my weirdnesses,
and smart as buttons. (really smart buttons) She
also appreciates my jokes, and lives close enough to
hang out on weeknights (though since we're not close
enough friends yet to spend a lot of time at each
other's houses watching movies or eating cheese-free
nachos, hanging out usually involves a little money
these days). Everland was cool, though she was afraid
of some of the rides. But a good time was had by all.
So far we've discovered we can spend a lot of time
together without getting sick of each other, and so
far our age difference (not shocking, but more than
three years) hasn't shown itself in any major way. I
think we're both glad to have a friend nearby, and
we've both been pretty good about nurturing a good
friendship without moving uncomfortably fast or
frustratingly slow.

Living alone has meant I spend a lot more time writing
than I did before. This is a very good thing.

Finally, I've had a revelation, possibly because of
the alone time, and possibly because I've started
spending more time in the Word, and in prayer (another
advantage of living alone, especially without cable
TV: nobody to distract you).

And here's how it goes. this is going to take a
while, so buckle in and get comfortable. maybe print
it out and take it to the dentist's office.

My oldest sister and I have a years old debate about
whether Christians ought to read books/listen to music
full of discord and hurt etc.; I argue that they're
part of the world where God has placed us, and part of
the human nature God put in us, and that more learning
happens along the lines of tension than along the
lines of harmony; Rebecca answers that being exposed
to, and turning my mind toward sometimes squalid
aspects of life can be damaging to my soul. Maybe
it's just that Rebecca's way of becoming available to
God is to seek out peace and quietness and wait for
God's whisper, while my way, traditionally, is to
stare into the storm to wonder at His splendour.
Revelation has come both ways (Elijah and Job)

I think it's a good debate for both of us -- iron
sharpens iron, and I think both of us benefit from
each other's insights. Often it seems that we are
arguing two sides of the same coin, and Rebecca
reminds me to fix my eyes on heavenly things, for
that's where we're GOING, while I (hope I) remind her
(how presumptuous I am!) to keep her eyes on the world
around, because that's where we ARE; fire is beautiful
because it's fire, as well as being beautiful because
it's a metaphor for the holy spirit. It can, and
should, be enjoyed for both, I think (am learning).

Christ managed to do both -- he brought peace to those
who needed it, and created harmony where there was
discord, but he also destabilized some people who were
too complacently secure, and often associated with
people who moved along the ragged edges of life.
Somewhere among the stances we argue is a way of life
that is harmonious and peaceful as well as challenging
and growing.

(sorry if some of this commentary is old hat for some
of you; writing it helps me work through it; that's
how I come to understand most things in my life.
Maybe, if anything, I should apologize for wrestling
my angels and demons in front of all of you.)

Anyway, I'd mentioned a while ago to rebecca that of
my family members, I think our minds operate most
similarly. Since then we've both looked at the
similarities between us and learned a few things, and
seen a few things in ourselves that we hadn't ever
thought to look for in ourselves before.

She said in her last e-mail that

"I think you are right that
we think the same way, but the
difference I see is in what we
think about." (see also: Phil. 4:8
"Whatsoever things are true, lovely,
honest, just etc think about such
things." "by beholding we are changed."
2Cor. 3:18: "But we all, with open
face beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same
image from glory to glory, by the
Spirit of the Lord." )

So I wrote in my journal about that, and had a
realization (here it is, finally.)

it's hard to admit this, because rebecca and I have
debated this exact thing before, with me vehemently
defending myself.

confession time.

Music has become a god to me. I was so busy thinking
about my ambition to be a writer, and wanting to make
sure God came before writing, and that if He asked me
to put writing aside to further His kingdom, I would,
that music snuck in the back door and became the thing
I didn't want to give up.

The thing is, there are the priorities I'll tell you
if you ask me to list them, and there are priorities
you would discover by drawing a pie chart of how I
spent my time, money, and thought. If there's a
discrepancy between the things you say are most
important, and the things you live as if they were the
most important, obviously you are lacking either
vision for your life, or commitment to that vision.

so I've decided to stow my CDs and my speakers and my
player for an indeterminate amount of time: it will be
more than a month, but I don't know when it will end;
basically, until I can listen to music without it
possessing my thoughts and causing me to spend
inappropriately large amounts of time, thought or
money on it.

I'm going to miss music a lot -- I can only think
it'll be like quitting smoking; everywhere you go,
someone's lighting up and making you miss that
feeling. Except it'll be even harder to defend,
because music isn't inherently bad for you; even the
music I listen to. I am not backing down on the
points I made in discussions about the value of
certain types of music; I'm just recognizing that, as
defensible as such music is in general and in
principle, in MY life, at this time, its presence
represents something other than a means to enjoyment
and (sometimes) learning about the world, and those
principles fall to the greater principle that "You
shall have no other gods before me".

I've been thinking lately about the idea that God is a
jealous god. I want to make sure that I am not
misunderstanding or underestimating God's (justified)
possessiveness over what calls itself His.

so pray for me. pray that ALL my values get realigned
appropriately, because I've been easily distractable
for a while. Living alone means I have a lot of time
where me and God are the only ones in the apartment.

This is pretty big for me. Most of you know how much
I talk about /listen to music. Most of my casual
spending money was spent on music last year. I don't
quite know yet what I'm going to do, or where my mind
will go when I stop thinking about that song on the
radio, but I'm kind of excited to find out -- because
I don't think God will disappoint me if I give Him all
that now(soon)-free space in my mind to do with as He
pleases.

The thing is, even if it's OK for Christians to go
into the world and engage with the things and ideas of
the world (in order to understand the people of the
world and better show them Christ's love, among other
reasons), this requires -- REQUIRES (and pardon me if
this sounds cliche; it's just becoming new to me
again) that we be absolutely anchored to God before we
make such forays.

You can't stand against the flow of a river if you
don't have a solid footing (and preferably a rope
around your waist that's tied to something even
bigger), and I was so busy saying that it's OK for
Christians to stand in the river that I forgot to
check whether my rope was secure. So now I'm at least
aware I was drifting, and looking to get that rope
tied tightly again. This will take time. Hopefully,
as I continue to spend time with God, He will move
more mountains in my life, and maybe by the time I get
back to Canada, you'll barely recognize me. Maybe.

So I'm asking you to pray for me. And thanking you,
for the prayers you've already done. I've been placed
in a spot where I don't think I've ever had so much
quiet in my life, and I can't wait to hear what God's
been whispering while my life was too loud to let me
hear. There are other areas of my life, I'm sure,
where I need such radical shifts and new insights, and
pray that I'm willing to go through those shifts, and
that I make no excuses. (that was how I knew music
was too important in my life: I started making excuses
about why I didn't REALLY have to cut back on my music
consumption).

anyway, it's an exciting time spiritually. I haven't
been this deep in the Word since my second year of
university, and I don't know if I've ever prayed even
this much (and believe me, there's room for
improvement). but for the first time, I can say I've
prayed recently for all the people on this list. I'm
not quite up to praying for each of you daily, but
weekly is better than my former "twenty seconds after
I finish reading your e-mail, with few exceptions"
rate. God has this snowballish knack for picking up
momentum as He goes, so who knows where this will end.


I love you all.

Becca: you asked for my response. I guess this is
part of it. Any thoughts?

Dan: in case I forget later, happy birthday, dude.
and mom and dad: happy 30th again.

Take care.

Rob

Update May 2003

Hi everybody. This is personal news, but I'm writing
a bulk (ish) e-mail (note the streamlined "to" list)
because I don't think I could handle writing each of
you a personal letter about this, but I want each of
you, specifically, to know so you can pray about it,
and know about it.

This morning I got a phone call from my Mom and Dad;
Dad had prostate surgery a little while ago to remove
a bunch of stones (I hope this isn't an overshare . .
. ) and today (I guess it's probably yesterday by now)
they saw the doctor for an update, etc..

The doctor told him that of the stones they removed, a
certain amount of them had cancerous cells in them.
They caught it in an early stage, and it hasn't
spread, which is excellent: prostate cancer is one of
the least threatening cancers after skin cancer, if it
is caught in time and dealt with appropriately. They
caught this one really early, so the prognosis is
really good (as cancer prognoses go), but even though
my nurse aunt says that this kind of prostate cancer
comes out fine 99% of the time, it's still the "C"
word, and it's still my dad, and that's a little
distressing: it's the first time cancer has struck
anyone in my family closer than cousins I've never
met. And whatever the success rate of treating this
kind of cancer or the other, it'll still be unpleasant
having his prostate removed: he'll be on his back
and/or limited in movement for 6-8 weeks after his
hospital stay, and, you know, he's my DAD, and I'm in
stinkin' Korea where all I can do is call regularly
and e-mail.

So pray for my Dad a lot: it's only been in the last
few years that I've really grown to know and admire
him, and see how much of him is in me, and pray that I
would be the best son I can from where I am, and that
my Dad's condition would neither wreck my stay in
Korea, nor that my stay in Korea would make me a poor
support during my Dad's hard time.

Still love it in Korea, etc. etc., but. . . I dunno,
this is the first time I've REALLY been frustrated
that I'm here instead of there, and I can't just drop
everything and spend the weekend at Mom and Dad's or
something.

Thanks for caring, and being the kinds of people I
care about enough, and who have cared enough about me,
that I want you to be the first to know news like
this. I'm blessed and lucky to have such a long list
of addresses in my "To" box for news like this: I
thank God every chance I get for having supports like
you.

Love you all
Rob